


fear, wish i didn't know the meaning of

by notfirewoodyet



Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: 5 Times, M/M, mention of drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 13:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1900122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notfirewoodyet/pseuds/notfirewoodyet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Good,” Peter says against Harry’s temple.  “You scared the hell out of me.”   </p>
<p>or 5 times Harry scared Peter, and 1 time Peter returned the favor</p>
            </blockquote>





	fear, wish i didn't know the meaning of

“Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty! Ready or not, here I come!” Peter yells out into the dark, uncovering his eyes and blinking them rapidly to try and get his bearings. 

“I’m gonna find you, Harry,” Peter says with as much confidence as he can muster. The truth is, well he’s a little scared. Whenever he and Harry play hide and seek, they always have to do it with all the lights off because “come on, Peter! It’s the only way it’s fun.” Even if it is the only way it’s fun, Peter hates it, because it’s so easy to get turned around in Harry’s humongous house, and he’s left scurrying around in the dark like an idiot. And Harry being Harry, of course, likes to hide in the smallest of spaces, which means Peter takes even longer to find him.

“Am I getting warm?” Peter shouts hoping Harry will trip up and make some sort of sound, alerting Peter to his hiding place. “Come on, Harry! Don’t be a cheater! You have to tell me if I’m getting warm!”

“You’re so cold, Pete, you’re in Antarctica right now!” Harry yells from a distance. Great, Peter thinks, turning around and heading the other way. He hates the dark. There’s a reason he sleeps with a night light, and he would be embarrassed about that if he didn’t think it was normal for a six-year-old to be afraid of the dark.

“Harry Osborn, where have you gotten yourself into?” Peter asks, running his hands along the wall he’s walking beside. “What about now? Am I warm?”

“A bit better, Peter, but you still need a light jacket,” Harry laughs, still sounding far away.

“You better not be hiding somewhere I can’t get to you!” Peter shouts, annoyance coloring his tone. Last time they played, Harry hid himself in his father’s office, and the two of them barely escaped before Norman Osborn went strolling in. If they had gotten caught, Peter feels like they would have been dead for sure.

Peter makes his way into the theater room on Harry’s floor, and immediately bumps into one of the chairs. “What about now? Am I warm?” Peter asks again, but he doesn’t get a response. He couldn’t have ventured that far that Harry can’t even hear him anymore. “Harry? Harry?” Peter says a bit frantically. Ugh, he hates the dark!

He starts walking backwards along the few rows of chairs, and suddenly when he reaches the curtain framing the big screen in the front of the room, he feels a pair of hands latch onto his shoulders from behind.

“Boo!” Harry yells right into Peter’s ear, and Peter lets out the highest-pitched scream he’s ever heard in his life. Harry flinches away and plugs his ears with his fingers.

“Oh my god, Pete,” Harry wheezes out, doubling over and clutching his stomach from how hard he’s laughing. “You should have seen your face!” Harry flicks on the light switch behind his head, and resumes his laughing and pointing.

“You big meanie!” Peter yells, and his comeback sounds lame even to his own ears. “You’re not playing fair!” Peter stomps his feet a few times, balls up his fists, and starts to march out of the theater room. He doesn’t need this.

“Ah no, come on, Pete. I was just messing around,” Harry says, grabbing onto Peter’s wrist and halting his storm out. 

“Let go, Harry,” Peter spits, but Harry just grabs onto his wrist tighter.

“No, look, it’s your turn to hide, and I promise from now on I’ll play fair. I won’t scare you, okay?” Harry says, staring right into Peter’s eyes with a gaze Peter has always thought is too intense for a six-year-old.

“Fine,” Peter huffs, finally managing to shake off Harry’s hold.

“Great!” Harry says excitedly, grabbing Peter’s hand and dragging him out of the room. “Okay, I’ll start counting, and you go hide. Make it somewhere good!” Harry shouts already turning around to cover his eyes.

Peter hurries along the hallway, and a part of him thinks about scaring Harry when he comes looking for him, but he decides not to. Unlike his friend, Peter will play hide and seek without giving someone a heart attack.

\----------

“No way, Harry! The Mets are so much better than the Yankees!” Peter says, kicking the soccer ball back towards Harry.

“Oh my god, Peter. You poor misguided soul. The Mets don’t even win games,” Harry says, shuffling the ball between his feet a few times before kicking it back to Peter.

“Who cares? They’re more exciting to watch. Besides, winning isn’t everything.”

“Yeah right,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. Harry’s always believed winning is more important than anything, so Peter’s not surprised by his response, but he wishes Harry didn’t think like that and just let himself have fun without the worry of winning or losing. Peter knows why Harry thinks this way, of course. His father. His father is always the reason behind most of Harry’s issues, and Peter wishes for the hundredth time that he could get Harry out of his father’s clutches, and bring him to his aunt and uncle’s house so they could be a real family. He already thought of Harry as his brother.

Peter is about to kick the ball back, but before he can, his vision gets filled with Flash Thompson’s chest barreling into his tiny body. “Watch where you’re going, Parker!” Flash shouts, even though he was the one who clearly crashed into Peter.

Harry runs over to the two boys, and grabs Peter’s hand to lift him off the ground. However, as soon as Peter’s up again, Flash trips him, sending his face smashing into the grass.

“Back off, Thompson!” Harry yells, shoving Flash with his hands, but Flash only moves back a fraction of an inch. He’s pretty huge for a ten-year-old.

“Or what, Osborn? Are you gonna call your little security guards to haul me off. God, you’re such a brat!”

Peter sighs and dusts off the dirt from his knees. If there’s one thing Harry hates more than anything, it’s being called a brat. “Just leave him alone,” Harry spits out, clenching his fists repeatedly.

Harry turns around to help Peter brush the grass off his t-shirt, but Flash shoves Harry into Peter, knocking them both onto the ground. One second, Peter is lifting himself up after being knocked onto the ground for a third time, and in the next second, he sees Harry literally fling himself at Flash, knocking the boy flat on his back, and he starts pummeling his face.

Harry is spewing out a string of cuss words that would probably make their teacher faint if she heard him, and there’s blood running down his knuckles due to his incessant attack. His face is redder than the brick that makes up their schoolhouse, and if he clenches his jaw any tighter, Peter is afraid it will literally shatter.

“Stop picking on him! Do you hear me?” Harry screams in Flash’s face as he slams his fist into his mouth. 

“Harry, stop!” Peter yells, attempting to grab onto Harry’s arm to stop the blows, but Harry just shakes him off with a snarl. Peter is more scared than he’s ever been in his life. Harry has a fire and rage in his eyes that Peter’s never seen before on anyone, and he never wants to see it again.

Tears are streaming down Flash’s cheeks and his face is starting to resemble a Picasso painting. Peter has to stop this, he’s afraid Harry’s going to kill the kid.

“Harry!” Peter tries again, this time grabbing onto Harry’s chin with as much strength as he has, and turning his face towards him. “Harry! Look at me! You have to stop. You proved your point, alright? Now, just stop.” Peter doesn’t even know what point Harry is trying to make, and he suspects Harry doesn’t either, but this just has to be over, right now.

Harry’s eyes look glazed over, but Peter thinks he heard what he said. “Come on,” Peter whispers, grasping onto Harry’s waist from behind, dragging him off Flash, and he walks them over to the big oak tree at the edge of the playground. He sits Harry down on the grass, and Peter starts rummaging around in his backpack that he had dropped here at the beginning of recess. 

“Why did you do that?” Peter asks, wiping a tissue along Harry’s chin to clean up some of the blood. 

Harry shrugs, bowing his head, and fiddling with his thumbs. “He’s always picking on you, Pete, and he has no reason to. I just figured I had to do something so he would never do it again.”

“Well then, I guess I should say thank you,” Peter sighs, picking up another tissue. He’s more than positive Flash won’t ever try to do anything to either of them again, but he doesn’t want to encourage Harry’s method of handling problems. “Just promise me you won’t do anything like that ever again, okay? Harry?” Peter asks, ducking his head to meet Harry’s vacant stare.

“Okay,” Harry whispers, gently brushing his cracked and bloody knuckles along Peter’s knee.

Peter gives him a small smile in return and runs a hand lightly through his hair. He whips his head up when he hears hurried footsteps approaching them, and he gives Harry’s hand a reassuring squeeze. Their teacher, the principle, and two of the school’s security guards are running towards them, and all Peter can do is hope that Harry doesn’t get into too much trouble. 

\----------

“Peter, do you know where he is?” Norman Osborn asks over the phone sounding a little more than mildly annoyed.

“Do I know where who is?” Peter replies confused. What the hell was Mr. Osborn doing calling his house? He didn’t even know he made his own phone calls. Peter always assumed the man had a sea of personal assistants to do everything for him.

“Harry,” Norman sighs. “I sent my butler to fetch him for dinner, but he wasn’t in there. Some of his clothes and his suitcase are gone, so I assumed maybe he had gone with you.”

“No, sir,” Peter says, his hand beginning to shake where he’s now clutching the telephone.

“Very well then,” Norman sighs again, and Peter can just picture him sitting at his huge decorative desk, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Thank you, Peter.”

Peter blindly puts the telephone on the counter when he hangs up, and plants himself on one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

Harry had always talked about running away when they were kids, but Peter never thought he would actually do it. His head starts pounding and he starts massaging his temples, letting out shaky breaths. Peter just hopes that Harry is being careful. He isn’t exactly known for his street smarts.

He starts thinking about places Harry had talked about going, but every destination involves boarding a plane to get him there. Harry had money, but his father controlled all of that. The most Harry could have gotten was a bus ticket, and Peter wonders how far a 13-year-old could possibly get.

His eyes begin to water and he swipes a rough hand across his mouth, willing the tears not to spill over. What if Harry had gotten far enough that he makes his way across the country, and no one ever finds him? Peter would never see him again, and the thought alone makes Peter’s chest hurt. Peter had already lost his mother and father because they decided to up and leave one day without taking their son with them, he doesn’t want to have to add Harry to that list.

Peter grabs the phone, placing it down directly in front of him, and proceeds to bore holes into the plastic. He’s hoping Harry will call him if he needs help, or to let him know where he is, or to ask Peter to go with him, because he would. He wouldn’t even hesitate before packing a bag and going to wherever Harry wants him to go. But, the phone doesn’t ring no matter how hard Peter stares at it, and eventually he drifts off to sleep, head lolling on the wooden table and his hand grasping the phone like a lifeline.

The next morning he wakes up in his own bed. He guesses Uncle Ben had brought him up during the night, and he shoots off the mattress when he hears the doorbell ring.

“Harry!” Peter exclaims, almost succeeding in ripping off the knob in his rush to get the door open. “Where the hell were you?”

“Good morning to you to, Peter. Nice bedhead,” Harry says, strolling into the living room, and lifting his sunglasses to rest on his head. “And to answer your question, I made it to Jersey before dad’s fucking goons found me. Seriously, Peter, Jersey. I didn’t make it far at all,” Harry adds frustrated, flopping down on the couch and shoving his bangs off his face.

“Why did you do it?” Peter asks, sitting down on the couch beside his friend. The friend he wants to both strangle and hug.

“Because, I can’t stand living in that house anymore, I can’t stand being around my father, and he probably wouldn’t have even noticed I was gone if his butler hadn’t told him,” Harry says, bouncing his leg up and down. “He wouldn’t miss me. Nobody would,” Harry whispers, biting his lip.

“Well, that was fucking stupid of you,” Peter says angrily. He’s leaning more towards strangling Harry at this point.

“What?” Harry asks, popping his head up with a snarl painted across his face.

“What about me? What, you thought I would just be a-okay never seeing you again?” Peter asks, standing up to his full height and glaring down at Harry. He stuffs his hands in his pockets to avoid the temptation to punch the kid.

“Peter, I-”

“Because I wouldn’t be, alright? You can’t just leave, Harry,” Peter spits. “It’s not okay for you to go, at least not without me.” Peter looks away from Harry’s gaze, wiping the pad of his thumb quickly below his eye. 

“Peter, I’m sorry.”

“I mean seriously, Harry, after all this time you actually thought I wouldn’t miss you? That I wouldn’t go crazy without you? You know how I feel about you,” Peter mumbles, kicking his feet on the rug. “You’re my best friend.”

“I’m sorry, Pete,” Harry says again, and he looks pretty guilty. Well good, Peter thinks. He should feel guilty for insulting Peter like that.

“God,” Peter breathes out, wrapping Harry into the tightest hug he’s ever given anyone, and he feels the other boy bury his face into his neck. “Don’t ever do anything like that again, okay? Promise?”

“I promise,” Harry murmurs, running his hand along Peter’s back.

“Good,” Peter says against Harry’s temple. “You scared the hell out of me.” 

\----------

Peter sends Harry a sixth text, asking him where he is and demanding for him to hurry up because the movie is going to start any second. Peter sighs, pocketing his phone in his coat, and leans against the wall to the theater. He knew Harry liked to be fashionably late, but this was just pushing it. After about 15 minutes without a response, Peter starts to get worried.

He makes his way to the Osborn mansion, and jogs up the stairs to Harry’s floor after the doorman lets him in. He better not find Harry still blow drying his hair, Peter thinks, rushing up the staircase.

“Harry!” Peter shouts, knocking on Harry’s bedroom door. “Harry if I see that blow dryer in your hand, I’m gonna chuck it out the window.” Peter’s threat doesn’t illicit any response, and now Peter is really worried. Harry loves his blow dryer.

“Harry, open up!” Peter yells, wiggling the locked doorknob. Peter steps back enough to give him a rushing head start, and then he proceeds to slam his entire bodyweight into the thick, oak door. He quickly thanks the radioactive spider that gave him his enhanced strength.

Peter doesn’t see any sign of Harry in his bedroom or in his enormous walk-in closet. He walks over to the bathroom door that is currently ajar and eases it open. The sight in front of him makes his heart fall into his stomach.

“Harry, oh my god!” Peter screams, stepping over Harry’s convulsing body, and dropping to his knees near his head. “Oh my god! Oh my god!” Peter yells over and over, and this is a shit time for his brain to shut down. 

Peter holds down Harry’s shoulders to stop the shaking, but he quickly removes them because he remembers something about how you weren’t supposed to do that to someone having a seizure. Geez, he took first aid when he volunteered as a lifeguard two summers ago, he should know what to do.

His instincts kick in, and he hurriedly sheds his coat, wadding it up and gently placing it under Harry’s head. The sound of Harry’s skull hitting the ceramic tile made him want to throw up even more than he already does. Peter rolls Harry onto his left side, and listens to his breathing to make sure it sounds somewhat normal. All they needed right now was for Harry to choke on his own vomit. He then unbuttons the top few buttons of Harry’s shirt, and waits for the shaking to stop.

Harry starts to come to, and Peter lets out a sigh of relief. He rolls Harry onto his back, adjusting the coat under his head, and lays his arms on either side of him. 

“Pete,” Harry chokes out, looking disoriented. “What happened?”

“You were having a seizure, Harry,” Peter says, trying to give him some breathing room. “How did it happen?”

“I don’t-, I don’t know,” Harry mumbles, trying to sit up, but Peter stops him with a gentle hand to his shoulder. Peter is about to sit down on the floor, when the convulsions start up again.

“Oh my god!” Peter yells, and he rolls Harry onto his side for a second time. He fumbles for his phone, and dials 9-1-1 because Harry needs a fucking hospital. He throws his phone onto the ground, and prays for Harry’s body to just stop fucking shaking. Then Peter’s eye catches on something on the sink countertop, and he’s pretty sure his intestines are threatening to come up his throat. There’s a small bag of white powder on the dark marble, making it stand out like a sore thumb. Peter turns over Harry’s right palm, and he sees the white residue embedded into the lines on his hand. 

Peter closes his eyes, and leans back against the wall. All he can do is sit and wait, and he fucking hates it. He hates all of this. Harry’s eyes blink open, and he sits up just enough to puke all over the clean, white floor beside him. Peter gets up to wet a washcloth, wringing it out a few times, and swipes the damp cotton across Harry’s mouth. He presses his shaky hand to Harry’s forehead, and he’s burning up. Then he moves his hand to Harry’s chest, and his heart is beating so fast it seems as though Harry had just sprinted five miles. Some part of Peter’s brain that was in denial was hoping that the white powder on the counter was in no way related to what was going on right now, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew it was.

The paramedics finally arrive to take Harry to the hospital, and they ban Peter from riding with him in the ambulance since he isn’t family. Peter wants to argue with them, but he doesn’t want to stall them from taking Harry to where they need to. So, he makes his way over to the hospital on foot, and a part of him wants to strip off his clothes, slap on his mask, and swing his way there, but there’s no point. The hospital isn’t far, and he knows he’s going to have to fight with the staff to even be let in to see Harry.

He gets there just in time to see Harry being wheeled into the emergency room, and just as he suspected, two nurses stop him from passing through. “I’m the only family he has!” Peter shouts, but they don’t pay attention to him. They just usher him into the waiting room and tell him the doctor would be with him shortly. 

Peter can’t sit still. He calls Aunt May to let her know what happened from a payphone outside, since his cell phone was lying abandoned on Harry’s bathroom floor. He goes back into the waiting room and paces around for three hours, biting his fingernail and running his hands through his hair, much to the annoyance of the people around him.

“Peter Parker,” a doctor calls out, and Peter whips his head up, running towards the doctor looking like a deranged troll doll. “Mr. Parker, I’m Dr. Tucker,” she says, extending her hand out for Peter to shake. “You called the ambulance for Mr. Osborn, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Peter says with wide eyes.

“Please follow me, Mr. Parker,” she says, leading them to an empty hospital room. “Mr. Osborn suffered a drug overdose caused by a large amount of benzoylmethyl ecgonine, or cocaine as most people know it,” the doctor says, and Peter nods along because he knew all this already.

“You might want to sit down for this next part, Mr. Parker. It’s a lot to ingest,” she says, and Peter feels all the blood leave his body.

“He’s not-,” Peter says, yanking at the collar of his sweater. “I assure you, he’s alive, Mr. Parker,” Dr. Tucker says, taking him by the hand, and sitting him down on the nearest scratchy hospital bed. 

“Mr. Osborn’s heart stopped so we used defibrillators to restart it.” Peter buries his face in his hands, but gives an imperceptible nod to indicate that he wants to hear the rest. “His body temperature reached 103 degrees, so we submerged him in an ice bath twice to stabilize him. He was also severely dehydrated, so we administered a saline solution to restore the liquids in his system.”

Peter clenches his jaw tightly because now isn’t the time to cry, and he drags his hand across his face. “Can I see him?” he asks, peering his head up at the doctor. 

“Are you family?”

“No ma’am, but I’m all he has. His mother died when he was young, and his father died a few months ago,” Peter says, swiping his clammy hands on his jeans and heaving himself off the bed. “Please,” Peter begs, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Please. I need to see him.”

“Alright, Mr. Parker,” she says with sympathetic eyes, “follow me.”

She leads him to a room towards the end of the hallway, and pushes back the curtain. Harry’s skinny arms are flopped on top of the thin sheet, and his face looks so, so pale. The red patches on his cheeks are giving him a sham of color, and his lips look more purple than pink. His bangs are plastered to his forehead, and Peter has never seen his hair look this unkempt. 

“We’re waiting for his vitals to get a little better before we transfer him to a private room,” Dr. Tucker says as Peter sits down on the vinyl chair next to the bed, reaching out to encircle his fingers around Harry’s frail wrist.

“Thank you,” Peter says, running his hand through Harry’s hair. “Mr. Parker, have you considered talking to Mr. Osborn about checking himself into a rehabilitation center? This obviously isn’t the first time he’s used, and we found traces of prescription painkillers flowing through his blood as well.”

Peter drops his head onto the bed and shakes his head. “I promise you I will get him the help he needs,” Peter mumbles into the mattress.

“Okay, Mr. Parker. Since Mr. Osborn is 18 years of age, and legally considered an adult, nobody can force him to do anything, but we have some time to discuss your options. I’ll be back to check his progress,” she says and swishes out of the room. 

Peter clasps Harry’s hand in both of his, and brings their intertwined palms to rest on his mouth. Half an hour later, Peter turns his head to see Harry slowly blinking his eyes open. 

“Pete?” Harry croaks out, darting his eyes all around the room. “What happened?” he asks for the second time that night.

Peter sighs and rakes his hand through Harry’s damp hair. “You overdosed, Harry. You’re at the hospital.”

“Fuck.”

“Yup,” Peter replies, disentangling his hands from Harry’s and leaning back in the chair with his arms crossed. “Harry, you have to quit this shit. You’re gonna kill yourself.”

“Peter, it’s fine. I can stop whenever I want.”

“Oh right,” Peter scoffs, shaking his head. “Then why didn’t you stop like you said you would the last time I confronted you about this? And you said you were only smoking weed and that you tried LSD twice. When the fuck did you start snorting coke?”

“Peter, can we not do this right now? My head is spinning,” Harry says annoyed.

“I’m getting you help, Harry. I don’t care what you say. I’m not going to watch you die!”

“God, Peter, this isn’t even happening to you. Just back off.”

Peter wants to punch Harry in the face, because is he serious? “It’s happening to you, Harry, which means it’s happening to me too.” 

“Peter-”

“No, Harry. I’m not going through this shit with you again. Do you hear me?” Peter can’t stop the tears from spilling over now, and he bites his lip hard to keep it from trembling.

“Peter, I’m so sorry,” Harry whispers, barely reaching up his hand to grab Peter’s. Peter drops his head on the bed by the side of Harry’s hip and lets himself sob.

“I’m so sorry,” Harry repeats, running a shaky hand through Peter’s hair.

Peter can’t do much more than sob harder. He has never been more afraid in his life.

\----------

“What the hell is going on?” Peter asks as he takes in the sight of more than a dozen cops and frazzled looking employees milling about Harry’s office. He was supposed to be meeting him here for lunch.

“Peter!” Felicia yells, rushing over to him with wide eyes. Something has to be very wrong if calm, cool, and collected Felicia looks this flustered. 

“What’s going on?” he asks again, grabbing onto her hands to help her focus.

“They took him, Peter.”

“I’m sorry what?” Peter replies, shaking his head a few times.

“Some assholes broke in here and took Harry. They’re fucking demanding ransom.”

Peter can physically feel the blood drain from his face. “How the hell did anyone break in here? Oscorp Tower is one of the most secure buildings on the planet.”

“I don’t know,” Felicia says looking ashamed, but Peter knows it isn’t her fault. 

“Okay, okay,” Peter breathes out, running his hands through his hair to try and get a handle on the situation. “Who took him?”

“We don’t know. They’ve been communicating with the police anonymously,” she says, wringing her hands together. “But, they’re demanding 5 million dollars in cash in exchange for Harry. They want it delivered to a warehouse down by the waterfront in two hours.”

“Well, they’re going to get their money, right?” 

“I don’t know, Peter,” Felicia whispers, looking near tears. “You know the board. They don’t like to negotiate with ‘hostiles,’ and they’ve been wanting to get rid of Harry since his first day as CEO. This would be the perfect opportunity for them.”

“You really think they would do that?”

“I know they would.”

“Fine,” Peter says with steely determination, clenching his fists and his jaw in the process. “Then looks like I’m going to have to do something.”

“What, Peter? What are you going to do?” Felicia asks, shaking him by the shoulders. “These guys are dangerous!”

“I’ll think of something,” Peter replies, gently removing her hands from his shoulders and striding out of the office.

Peter strips off his clothes, throwing them absentmindedly into some random alleyway, slaps on his mask, and swings down to the warehouse, landing on top of the skylight to peer inside. He needs some sort of plan of attack here. He can’t bust through the ceiling and incite an all out gun battle. Harry’s in there, and he doesn’t want to risk him being caught in the crossfire.

When he looks down, the first thing he sees is Harry. His wrists are tied behind his back, and he’s frantically moving them back and forth in an attempt to loosen the rope. His ankles are bound to the legs of the wooden chair he’s currently bouncing around in, and there’s a blindfold covering his eyes. His mouth isn’t gagged, which Peter thinks is pretty stupid of his kidnappers, since he can see Harry mouthing off to the two burly men who currently have their backs towards him. He can only imagine what he’s saying.

The good thing is that there’s only two men in the room Harry is in, but Peter knows the second he bursts through the skylight, many more will come barreling through the door, just like cockroaches scurrying around when you flick on a light.

Peter grips his head, and forces himself to look all around him to think up his best course of action. He’s just wasting time up here. He looks down into the room again, just in time to see one of the henchman whip Harry across the face with the butt of his pistol, and Peter sees red. 

He bursts through the ceiling feet first, sending glass shards raining down to the floor, and swings himself forward to kick both men in the chest, using every ounce of momentum he has. He webs them together and flings their guns out the window. Just like he suspected, five more men come rushing in with their weapons raised.

“Put your hands up,” one of them says, staring Peter down.

“God, you guys are so cliché,” Peter quips, attaching a web to the guy’s gun and flinging it out the window to join the others. One of the other men fires a bullet out of his gun, and it whizzes right past Harry’s head. Peter immediately shoots a web onto Harry’s back, and slides him towards the furthest corner of the room. He would love to be able to untie Harry’s wrists and ankles, and swing them right out of here, but he has a feeling these guys wouldn’t take too kindly to him stopping to do that.

Suddenly, Peter is swinging around the room, dodging bullets left and right, and flipping off of anything in sight. He manages to take down four goons easily, but he has lost track of the fifth one during all the chaos. 

“Oh, Spider-Man,” he hears the voice say mockingly, so he whips his head around and stops dead in his tracks. “I wouldn’t move if I were you,” the man laughs, dragging a struggling Harry closer to Peter with a gun held firmly to his temple. “Unless you want this kid’s blood on your hands, then by all means try it.”

Harry is looking at Peter with pleading eyes now that his blindfold has been stripped off, and he’s barely shaking his head to indicate that he doesn’t want Peter to do whatever it is he’s thinking of doing. It would be just like Harry to have a gun to his head and worry about Peter’s safety. 

“Okay, look, just let him go, alright?” Peter says, extending his hands in a placating manner, but the guy just grips Harry around the neck tighter. “If it’s money you want, I can get you the money, just let him go.”

“Hah, please,” the man snorts. “How are you gonna get me 5 million dollars? Are you going to forfeit your disgustingly, squeaky-clean moral code and decide to rob a bank?”

“No. But, I will get you your money. I promise you,” Peter says, risking a step closer. “All you have to do is let Mr. Osborn go, and I’ll get you the cash. And if I don’t then you-, you can just-, you can kill me.”

“Pe-, Spider-Man!” Harry screams, looking at Peter with a crazed expression. “You can’t do that! I won’t let you!” he shouts, trying to fight off the guy’s hold. “Absolutely not!”

“What the fuck?” the man spits. “Do you two know each other or something?”

“No,” Peter says, trying to sound unfazed. “But, as you said before, I live by a ‘disgustingly, squeaky-clean moral code,’ and part of that is protecting innocent people from getting hurt.”

“Fine,” the guy scoffs, shoving Harry to the side and aiming his gun towards Peter’s chest. Before Peter can even react, a bullet shatters through the small, side window, piercing through the man’s back, leaving him to collapse in a pool of blood. The SWAT team comes racing in through the door the men had barreled through before, sweeping the room for any other weapons or lurkers. 

“You asshole,” Harry laughs, crumpling into Peter’s arms. “You had me going there for a second. You should take up acting.”

“I’ll think about it, Osborn,” Peter says, dragging his gloved hand through Harry’s hair. He guesses Harry assumes Peter knew the cops would arrive, when he really and truly didn’t, but he’ll let Harry believe that. He doesn’t want to freak him out anymore than he already is after getting abducted by some greedy mobsters.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Peter whispers, resting his forehead against Harry’s temple. Now that his adrenaline is wearing off, he’s finally letting himself feel what he didn’t allow himself to feel before. All he was concentrating on was finding Harry and bringing him home alive.

“Well, at least it wasn’t my fault this time,” Harry snorts and Peter rolls his eyes. 

++++++++++

Quite frankly, the opportunity is too good to pass up. Harry is standing in front of the large, glass window that overlooks the city lights, and he’s absently running his thumb across his chin, a sure sign that he’s deep in thought.

So, Peter crawls onto the ceiling as quietly as he can, then he lowers himself, upside down, on one of his webs, positioning himself just inches behind Harry. “Err-hmm,” Peter says, startling Harry, who then whips his body around, and runs smack into Peter’s face.

“Peter, what in the fuck?!” Harry shouts, staggering backwards with a hand gripping his chest. “You scared the fuck out of me, you big fucking jerk!”

Peter drops onto the floor in a heap of raucous laughter, clutching his stomach, with tears rolling down his cheeks, because finally, finally, he managed to scare Harry Osborn. Harry just sends him the most furious glare he can muster, shooting daggers into Peter with his ice blue eyes, which just makes him laugh harder.

“If you’re all done rolling around on the floor like an idiot, would you mind telling me why you told me to meet you here?” Harry spits out, gesturing to the room around them.

“Okay, okay,” Peter says, lifting himself up off the ground and trying to regain his composure, but little chortles of laughter manage to escape through.

“Peter,” Harry says impatiently, crossing his arms in front of him.

“Relax, I’ll tell you,” Peter says, grabbing onto Harry’s arms and pulling him towards him. “But first, I want to do this.” Peter grasps the back of Harry’s neck, dragging him in for a kiss and running his thumb gently across Harry’s cheek. 

“Hi,” Peter whispers, resting his forehead against Harry’s and brushing his thumb across his bottom lip.

“Hi,” Harry replies slightly annoyed, but Peter can see a hint of a smile on his face.

Peter lightly knocks their foreheads together, and then he grabs Harry’s hand, spinning him around and walking them around the small room.

“So, what do you think?” Peter asks, running his thumb across the back of Harry’s hand.

“It looks like a crappy studio apartment,” Harry replies confused.

“Ever the observant,” Peter quips, grabbing onto Harry’s other hand and turning him so that they were facing each other. “It is a crappy studio apartment,” Peter continues, swallowing to alleviate his dry throat, so he could hopefully get the next part out. “And I want it to be our crappy studio apartment.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Harry asks with wide eyes.

“I want to live with you, Harry,” Peter says, jostling their hands together. “I mean, come on, we’re already going to be juniors in college, and we haven’t really gone through the rites of passage.”

“What rites of passage?”

“You know, like living in a shitty apartment that neither of us can move around in, eating ramen straight out of the pot, arguing over who used up the last of the hot water, and constantly having a broom in our hands to kill the roaches who have become permanent tenants here.” 

“You paint quite the picture, Peter,” Harry deadpans, rolling his eyes a little. “I can afford a better place for us, and we don’t have to share it with vermin, which I’m not completely convinced aren’t mutated.”

“Harry,” Peter sighs, letting go of his hands and taking a few steps back. “I want to be able to pay my half of everything, and I’m sorry, but this is all I can afford.”

Harry gives him an impossibly fond smile and grabs him around the waist. “Peter, you prideful son of a bitch,” Harry says with a smirk. “We can live here together, but if you think I’m going to be running around here chasing roaches with a broom, you’ve got another thing coming. You’re on eternal roach duty. Deal?” 

“Deal,” Peter laughs, shoving Harry against the wall and kissing him senseless.


End file.
